The secret sauce is empathy. "My nightmare dealing with a legacy codebase"? We've all dealt with that scenario, even (or especially) if it's our own code, years later. Sharing "war stories" like that is interesting and builds camaraderie.
On-boarding is harder to empathize with. For most readers it was likely a while ago, and other memories of their company have replaced the experience of the very first week. Even if it was bad, readers who are employed at a company just put up with it. Thus, Rachel's "this is stupid and so is everyone one involved except me" tone, falls flat by insulting the reader.
Then there was the promise - of hearing about red flags. Personally I expected some sort of horror story. "Here's the Kafkaesque story of why I didn't have a laptop for 3 months and was forced to access my email using a fax machine".
Instead, there was this bit with having to gasp talk to a coworker while being taught the company's HR system. Searching for a dog is inane, but hardly a nightmare. I'll be honest, I didn't keep reading much past that.
If you changed the details in "my nightmare delivering a project for a client" to be "THEN, the client spent a bunch of time with me speccing out the work to be done, and then gave me plenty of time to do the work they asked, and I couldn't do it", would you blame the commenters for a "this person must be incompetent" sentiment? The situation's less clear cut than that, but the devil's in the details!
On-boarding is harder to empathize with. For most readers it was likely a while ago, and other memories of their company have replaced the experience of the very first week. Even if it was bad, readers who are employed at a company just put up with it. Thus, Rachel's "this is stupid and so is everyone one involved except me" tone, falls flat by insulting the reader.
Then there was the promise - of hearing about red flags. Personally I expected some sort of horror story. "Here's the Kafkaesque story of why I didn't have a laptop for 3 months and was forced to access my email using a fax machine".
Instead, there was this bit with having to gasp talk to a coworker while being taught the company's HR system. Searching for a dog is inane, but hardly a nightmare. I'll be honest, I didn't keep reading much past that.
If you changed the details in "my nightmare delivering a project for a client" to be "THEN, the client spent a bunch of time with me speccing out the work to be done, and then gave me plenty of time to do the work they asked, and I couldn't do it", would you blame the commenters for a "this person must be incompetent" sentiment? The situation's less clear cut than that, but the devil's in the details!